… I’m not liking you right now because you’re absolutely correct.
1 Like
You don’t need to, and perhaps shouldn’t, put your phone and email on a public forum. I generally don’t like DMing people on here unless they give me the ok first, which, I guess you implied (which went Whoosh!).
Apologies, I’ll send it to you via a DM on here. I’d suggest erasing your contact info - the people on this forum would not misuse it, but a random person browsing from the shadows just might. Be safe!
All my relevant details have been and continue to be on the Clifford Chance website for the last twenty six years or so and I’m using my real name at the THS and most everywhere else, using the Stargazer moniker (a most silly one, don’t you agree?) here was just me being my usual obnoxious self. 
I remember the time when everybody’s telephone number and home address was in the phone book. In hindsight, it’s amazing the world didn’t go under right then and there. All that data protection crap gets on my nerves, I’m like Ian Gillan in that way.
1 Like
“All we are saaaaayiiing, hire Clifford & Chance!!!”
(An irresistible jingle if there ever was one)
2 Likes
Oh my objection is not that LZ2 is too raw or that it’s loud blues rock, both are qualities I like.
My first objection is that it is not original like it claims to be- and while all other artists steal, we credit our influences - LZ2 is disrespectful to the Blues artists it stole from in that Page and Plant claimed what was not theirs to claim - Willie Dixon sued them in the 80s for not crediting his immense influence on LZ2 and other records. He won and got the credit and royalties he was rightfully owed - the fact that it took a lawsuit and that Page and Plant were perfectly happy with not crediting his influence and claiming the songs as being purely original is incredibly disrespectful and dishonest.
We all steal as artists, it’s unavoidable, the difference is many of us are honest about where we stole from and give credit where it is due.
Second objection: most musicians put time into their craft - the lack of time honing skills or being bothered to play Blues in a respectful manner and just think you can do your own thing without showing you really understand the genre, or are at least putting effort into trying to understand the genre, is beyond arrogant to me. This is what I hear on LZ2 - a bunch of cocky young Brits with the arrogance to think they understand and can play the genre.
I was like that around that age too, so I can relate, although I honestly shake my head at my younger self and ask, “What were you thinking? You knew practically nothing of the genre or understood where it came from at the time!”
I also don’t like my arrogant, younger self very much. I understand it’s a process behind every artist, but man was I wet behind the ears!
Anyways, that youthful arrogance is what I hear on LZ2 - was that the band’s intention? No, I think they were trying to do the opposite and pay tribute to their heroes, but the consequence, in my opinion, is one of youthful ignorance and arrogance. For this reason also, I can’t stand the record, and I know there’s people who feel similar, some of them are friends of mine in the Blues community.
As for young Robert and your argument that he’d loose something by taking away those vastly out of tune bends, good! And in fact, I’m glad he lost it, he was better for it!
Listen to the control he has over his voice on Houses of the Holy vs LZ2 - he’s still bending those notes, but now he knows exactly where to bend them and demonstrates understanding and control over his instrument.
LZ2 is Robert over bending and not realizing he’s taken the note too far - HOTH is Robert knowing how far to take the note, and if he over bends, he knows where the over bend will work.
It’s the difference between experience and skill vs ignorance and unskillfulness. Robert now knows the difference and knows he’s a far better singer than he was in his youth.
There are elements of my own art I don’t like - my first album has the cockiness of youth, and I didn’t really know how to sing yet. My guitar playing? It needed improving.
If you took all that away, it wouldn’t be that record. So, Uwe, I get what you’re saying. I love my first record because I wouldn’t have it any other way, brash youthful arrogance included. Post apocalyptic Blues influenced concept album about a fallen Canada? As his first record? Who the fuck does this kid think he is?
But if you took all that away, it wouldn’t be special, would it?
I think I can relate to what you’re saying if I relate early Zep to my early growth as an artist.
I can absolutely understand your perspective on LZ2 - but all those things I mention about my own record I don’t like, I absolutely can’t stand about LZ2 - it could be because I see my younger self reflected in that record, and I don’t like it. That’s an understandable reaction, I feel.
Although I made no secret about my influences - I openly credit them in the press or in the liner notes for each release. I even dedicated my first record to Jon! I always steal openly and honestly, and that is a big difference between myself and other artists vs Page and Plant - we don’t not credit our influences and then claim to be wholly original.
Anyone who does otherwise is speaking horseshit, and in my view, Page and Plant spoke a lot of horseshit back in the day. It shouldn’t take a lawsuit to get you to fess up.
I think that really irks me the most about those guys - if they’d been honest originally in the crediting of their influences on LZ2, I think I could have respected that record even if I don’t like it. But, they weren’t honest, and paid the price, literally.
I won’t honour dishonest thieves or give their actions respect they don’t deserve. Honest ones are another matter - it’s why I like Purple - they’ve always been honest about where they take from, and they have my respect for it.
I cannot respect the dishonesty of LZ 2 or Page and Plant, period. I refuse to. That’s really why I despise that record, and that’s where I’m coming from. I feel it deserves to be called out for what it is: dishonest and disrespectful.
If not the intention of the band, that is the result, the consequence. Why else would there be lawsuits?
If you don’t agree, I accept that, but that’s really why I can’t stand that record or that period of the band.
2 Likes
I don’t know if it qualifies as ‘dishonest’, but Houses of the Holy was sped-up at mastering, that’s why it sounds so bright and Percy sounds even more girly-er than usual!
BTW, I hear a similar vibe between Splat!'s “Sacred Land” intro and Zepp’s “In the Light” one, but it may be just me… 
Actually, my understanding was it wasn’t sped up at mastering, but through a vari-speed tape machine during mixing as a deliberate effect. I’m not sure it’s dishonest either, considering the chipmunk effect is deliberate and how the band wanted it to sound - ie not as they initially recorded it.
I’ll take Chipmunk Plant any day of the week, personally.
1 Like
Wow, I didn’t know that Mike!
It is a good album (“No Quarter” stands out)
Cheers, J.-
1 Like
It’s a great album for me - I adore No Quarter, but The Ocean is my favorite Zep tune ever! I just love the riff and that monster groove from the whole band!
1 Like
Fantastico. All thar you wrote is my thought.
Thanks for opening the issue up so thoroughly, Mike!
Early Led Zeppelin take me to a very vulnerable and impressionable time in life, to when I was something like 14 years old and had only recently discovered I actually loved pop music. In a proto-Internet world, as a white kid in a non-English speaking country, I had no real knowledge of Willie Dixon or Howlin’ Wolf or John Lee Hooker, and definitely not their songwriting. What I did have was the ungodly racket of the early Led Zeppelin albums, after the likes of Animals’ Boom Boom, Yardbirds’ I’m A Man, et cetera. I didn’t read the credits, I heard the music - and the music transformed me. And that is the point in time I return to when I the needle drops on the first side of LZ II.
“[not] being bothered to play Blues in a respectful manner and just think you can do your own thing without showing you really understand the genre, or are at least putting effort into trying to understand the genre, is beyond arrogant to me”
Considering who Jimmy Page played with before forming the “New Yardbirds”, this opinion was not likely to have been shared by his peers. But it’s actually the same thing I have been talking about earlier in the thread, but have not been able to phrase! Unlike many of their peers, Led Zeppelin took the blues that preceded them and transformed it into something else entirely. Whether that is “cocky and arrogant” and “not in a respectful manner” is debatable, but the lack of respect was a required attribute for it to become life-changing.
If I had first listened to the black blues players with devotion, it would probably be easy to share your perspective, that much is certain. Not a dissimilar situation to Skip James hearing Cream play I’m So Glad in his old days and commenting “They got it ass backwards. They don’t have the harmony, the rhythm.”
In any case, this is a very entertaining discussion and I’m happier for it existing!
p.s. Ian Gillan, for one, is on record for saying: “like Zeppelin, we found dignity throught [sic] the music we were playing”.
p.s. Deep Purple are one of the few bands that don’t take me back, because it’s an affection that has lived and continued to breathe through these decades; as much as I am in my early teenswith my first exposure to songs like Space Truckin’ and Stormbringer, I am all of 22 listening to Bananas and Doing It Tonight, 33 when I have All The Time In The World, and now 44 when I listen to Sacred Land. Of course there’s a tint of personal nostalgia with Purple as well, and I rate some of the things much higher than I would without it.
Zeno, I come to this discussion through many years of change. Once upon a time, I too was an arrogant young white male teenager who thought he understood the Blues and could just do my own damn thing with it. Then in my twenties, I met my mentor, a much older white traditional Blues artist, who taught me the chords, structures and variations of the Blues, who encouraged me to listen to guys like Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf and Robert Johnson. He also encouraged me to be myself, and give credit where it was due and show respect to those who came before me and who made the genre as an expression of both suffering and solidarity.
So, I did my best to respect and be a wild maverick who dared to mix Blues and Prog Rock influences and Hard Rock influences together. Sometimes I didn’t succeed out of lack of awareness, and sometimes I learned and changed and grew.
By the time I encountered Zep in my mid thirties, the respect for the genre had already been instilled in me, so when I heard LZ 1-3, what I heard was a lot of terrible Blues covers, outright theft in many cases, by young white guys who thought they were the shit.
Did I fuck up in similar ways? Sure - but the respect had been deeply ingrained in me, even in my twenties when I was working with my mentor, and by this point all I really feel when listening to LZ2 and most of LZ1 and LZ3 is total disgust and revulsion. I’ve listened to the whole record maybe twice, and I have no desire whatsoever to listen to it a third time and torture myself again!
Of the few Early Zep originals and covers I really like as far as the studio recordings are concerned are the following:
Good Times, Bad Times
Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You
Communication Breakdown
Ramble On (the only song off LZ 2 I can actually enjoy listening to!)
The Immigrant Song
Since I’ve Been Loving You (itself blatant theft from the band Moby Grape - however it’s performed so well that even I have to admit it’s good, blatant theft not discounted)
Just six songs, the rest of the studio recordings on those first three albums are unlistenable to me, mostly because I cannot abide Plant’s early vocals or Page’s messy, half hearted attempts at lead guitar work (although Uwe is correct, he’s good and rhythm playing and is a master at utilizing open/alternate tunings, even I have to give him that!).
These days, I tell people that I am decidedly not a traditional Blues artist - I label myself as a progressive Blues and roots artist and make it clear I am far from traditional and trying to do something new in the genre by mixing Blues, it’s adjacent genres like rock, country, folk and jazz and prog rock and concept albums together.
Blues will always be the center of my own music - I can’t avoid that. I feel compelled to show it and those who created it the respect it deserves and push boundaries and dare to do something unconventional with it, because that is who I am as an artist and human being: completely unique and unorthodox.
It’s a hard line to straddle, and the balance is continually shifting. If you learn to flow with it, it’s incredibly rewarding both for the art made and the personal growth gained.
My few LZ songs I like always to listen
Good Times, Bad Times
Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You
You Shook me
Ramble On
Tangerine
Four Sticks
When the Levee Breaks
Thank You (I really love this song, for me their best)
Your Time Is Gonna Come
1 Like
Wien i first discovered Purple i Was hooked on Hard Rock, Zep got me into Blues .
Always prefered Purple though my Musical Journey led me to many shores.
But every new Purple album leads me back to where i started: In Rock, first listened to in 1981…hence it will always have a special place in my heart
Very nice list 
I love these:
https://youtu.be/IbW5K2F1N28?is=MWArvhgGOgxjqIr3
+
https://youtu.be/hW_WLxseq0o?is=khgt82n-6ZwEBp7q
There are others, but these two are so very good.
I am not fond of Rob’s voice, but Jimmy Page is, at least to me, very good. Not RB good, but very good 
Youthful arrogance, when, if not at the dawn of the 70s with musicians as young as the LZ guys then were, should that have been allowed and possible? 
LZ never claimed to be a Blues band, they just took aspects of it and threw them in their mixer which is perfectly legitimate, that is how new art is created.
That Jimmy Page - he is the culprit, not the others - is such a vain man that he thinks anything he puts his hands on becomes his own, whether it is old Blues licks or Jake Holmes’ Dazed & Confused
https://youtu.be/pTsvs-pAGDc?is=529uIN7zJbdJxN8q
or the intro to the laughing forests songs where, uhum, the SPIRIT of inspiration apparently gently kissed little Jimmy at night
is another matter altogether. The guy is a friggin’ magpie and chronically forgetful of other people‘s intellectual property, most likely a medical condition, but feels sufficiently entitled to do so.
2 Likes
[quote=“Forum Solipsist, post:156, topic:95, username:Stargazer”]
That Jimmy Page - he is the culprit, not the others - is such a vain man that he thinks anything he puts his hands on becomes his own, whether it is old Blues licks or Jake Holmes’ Dazed & Confused
Uwe, sweetie, isn’t that how you became a magnificent lawyer?
I mean a person needs a bit of self confidence to be so convincing that other people acknowledge your abilities, whether it is in guitarplaying or lawyering
As you might have seen or heard, my heart beats the fastest for Purple, but I do like the cockiness the Oasis bros have or some of the guys in Led Zep
Well all that aside, I heard this one the other day:
https://youtu.be/tg0C26QjDgw?is=_dIleKInsTQYcTpk
Oh you must admit they had something extra..
At the moment in Denmark this is happening:
https://youtube.com/shorts/IJicH-QFjoQ?is=ksFX58JHVWjFXDLB
So if I’m not appearing in here I might have been hit by some lightning 
Off-topic, but gotta love these new AI thingies, very creative…
And, hey Jimmy!!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EoCXKLOMp54
This other one however, is not AI…
1 Like
The soundtrack, for Anton:
1 Like
Anton says: thank you very much
And his mom does not like Thin Lizzy that much, but this tune is neat
1 Like